One of the Justice League’s simpler common sense rules
was that they did not become involved in a sovereign nation’s internal
conflicts. The early violence had a tendency to pop up in the
Watchtower Monitor Womb before international media picked up on anything,
and the League kept an eye on the disturbing ones, anticipating the moment
it would cross a border and be eligible for their intervention. An
exception might be made if an indisputably criminal enterprise was
presenting itself as a political rebellion for camouflage, as with the
recent black market sale of an old Soviet nuke to a “Czech Nationalist” who
couldn’t spell Prague but had Vandal Savage, Dr. Ivo, and Kobra on speed
dial. Occasionally an atrocity provoked the intervention of another
sovereign nation, which technically justified the League involving
themselves. But that was a grey area, for sometimes the second
country’s outrage was sincerely humanitarian and sometimes it was motivated
by political or economic interests. So the League preferred to wait
for a condemnation from Amnesty International, the Red Cross or the United
Nations, ideally all three, rather than risk taking sides in a war, though
of course they would not wait forever when massive loss of life hung in the
balance. But the League itself did not issue official on-the-record
statements of concern or condemnation, though every few years Diana tried to
get them to reconsider the policy. Each time her efforts ended with a
new endorsement of Amnesty International. Their agreement with
that organization’s publically stated view on whatever subject might be
inferred, but as a body, the JLA would act, not speak, and when it acted in
matters involving national interests, it would trust the judgment of those
organizations recognized as “the world’s conscience.”

Another of the Justice League’s simpler common sense
rules was that you didn’t go into Gotham without informing Batman.

That’s it. No exceptions, no gray areas, no
offsets or waiting periods. Don’t.

So even though Selina Kyle had invited Kyle Rayner to
lunch and even though she was engaged to Bruce Wayne and actually living in
his house, Kyle decided to call it in on the theory that “it couldn’t hurt.”
The only acknowledgement was a soft grunt on the commlink, which didn’t
clear up if the call-in was expected or if Batman found it superfluous or
even silly. Arriving at the spot Selina specified to meet, in front of
the waterfall in Wayne Plaza just steps from the entrance to the Wayne
Tower, he decided on silly. The next time—not that such a preposterous
thing would ever happen again—he wouldn’t be such a fathead.

Or possibly he would. Even without his lingering
discomfiture from the call-in, Wayne Plaza was all kinds of impressive. The
main entrance to the tower, the lobby one had to cross to reach the
elevators, and then the private elevator that accessed the penthouse…
It went beyond impressive to downright intimidating, punctuated as it was
with the memory of embarrassing mix-ups trying to deliver the booze for
Dick’s bachelor night. Then there was Selina herself—Selina who was
Catwoman, who in her villainous days had only gone up against Hal Jordon’s
Green Lantern and of whom it was openly said ‘If it had been Rayner, he’d be
dead now.’ The last was not critiquing their relative powers—he was
used to being dismissed on that front by everyone who knew Hal in his glory
days and he was long past being bothered by it—but referencing the fact that
she flirted, that she was incredibly hot, and that she reduced gods and
Batmen to gaping mortals who left doors unlocked and forgot their car keys.

Then the elevator doors opened and the penthouse he
remembered from the bachelor party sprawled before him. The minor
changes to the décor didn’t faze him, but the addition of a butler—Batman’s
butler no less—made him feel more out of his depth than any Green Lantern
ever should. He reminded himself of the cosmos he’d looked on that
made the Gotham vistas outside the windows look like nothing. And it
worked! Even when Selina ordered lunch on the terrace and Pennyworth
asked about food allergies, he managed to reply coherently, like a sensible
adult with a functioning brain that processed all the words being said to
him.

And he was, really; there might be just a little delay
here and there, but he was doing just fine until that word artist.

“Excuse me?” he bleated.

“We need an artist, and it’s going to require a unique
aesthetic and a rather specific skillset, including taking direction,
nay instruction, nay orders to a degree that creative people are not
inclined. And it’s all extremely high profile, even for the
Gotham art world this will be huge, which means a global—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Selina, I’m not that kind of artist.
I do a comic strip.”

“Yeah, but other you,” Selina said, pointing to his
ring, “No stranger to the world media, right? The feeding frenzies and
the press conferences that are more like fire fights. You’ve been in
that vat of piranha enough times, you’re not going to freak out at a few
hundred cameras snapping in your face.”

“Um,” Kyle said, scrunching his eyes shut as if trying
to block out telepathic interference. “So is this a League thing?”

“No, it’s just something we want you to do,” Selina
said frankly.

“‘We’ being you and—”

“Bruce, right.”

Kyle tried to process it. Bruce.

“But it’s not League?”

“No, it’s a private project that we want you for.”

“Not as Green Lantern of Sector 2814 but…?”

“Kyle Rayner the artist,” Selina said, stressing each
word. “The things you can do with light and your imagination are a factor,
but we want Rayner the artist, not the Green Lantern.”

“I do a comic strip.”

“Kyle, this is going to be a bit bigger than that.
This is the world of galleries that have three spaces just here in Gotham,
two in London, and one each in Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva
and Hong Kong. This is the world where a buyer will weigh paying the
California sales tax while a piece is lent to an exhibit there versus buying
it abroad and paying to import it a second time. This is the world
where a typo in an email that it’s Series II and not Series III might mean a
six figure difference in price.”

Kyle considered asking to use the bathroom.
Instead he repeated that he drew a comic strip.

“You have a sensibility we need for this,”
Selina said sincerely. “We know that from the portrait you did of
Bruce a few years ago. We know because you work with Superman in
life-or-death situations and put your life in his hands on a regular basis.
And we know… Kyle, we know because you and Effigy were nearly torn to pieces
by an anti-meta mob in Washington that time.”

He didn’t hear her. He heard nothing she said
after the portrait.

“Bruce really liked that portrait, eh? Oil’s not
my usual medium at all,” he glowed. “And I hadn’t done a canvas that
big since art school.”

Seeing this was the tack to take, Selina elaborated on
the portrait. The portrait Bruce had hung in the reception area
outside his office where she herself had noticed and admired it shortly
after they began dating. Before knowing anything about his other life
in the Justice League and having never heard of his comic strip, she knew
Rayner the artist. She’d noted his name. She found his work memorable…

When she figured she’d got all the mileage there was
out of that topic, she said lunch would be ready and they could move to the
terrace. As they stood and walked, she took his arm and said:

“Of course this would also be ‘not your usual medium,’
unless you count the aforementioned lightplay.” Again she pointed to
his ring and gave a coy little smile, and Kyle began to suspect that the
whispered judgments were true. If he’d faced her as Catwoman, he’d be
dead by now.

Lunch was a haze of déjà vu and some kind of veal.
For the second time in his life, a completely life-changing proposition was
before him beyond the wildest imaginings of a kid from North Hollywood.
He wasn’t sure which was more improbable: the alien Ganthet giving him the
power to conjure any form of matter or energy through sheer force of will,
or a Gotham socialite making him the kind of artist that breezed into a city
and did a million dollar light installation.

“Well since you mention it,” Selina said when he told
her, “you do have a decision to make there, and I’m afraid you don’t have
long to think about it. ‘Poor kid from North Hollywood’ isn’t an
issue, the publicists love that stuff. But ‘comic strip’ isn’t what
anybody expects on the resume of someone who does this kind of thing.
Now, we can still sell it. It’s a little more work, but if you want
it, it’s doable. Rayner the comic strip guy can do this, but
there’s no going back if you do. It can’t be the strip one week, then
the installation from Gotham travels to Amsterdam and after all the parties
and appearances there, you’re back home doing a four-panel for Glitz.”

“What’s the alternative?” Kyle asked.

“Creating a persona. ‘Kyray is acknowledged as a
key mover and shaker of the generation of conceptual artists that propelled
electronic light displays into mainstream art. The scale and reach of
his creative vision—blah, blah, blah—merges the possibilities of digital
data analyses with the romance of epic visual display, dominating the
attention of institutional and market forces like no artist of the new
millennium. His artistic progress—blah, blah, blah—is mapped by a
stream of high profile exhibitions—something, something, dark
side—awe-inspiring spectacle of his images and the access that they provide
to the invisible mechanisms driving the globalized contemporary world.’”

Kyle swallowed. Then he drained his water glass.
Then he looked out at the panoramic view and once again envisioned the
galactic rim to put it all into perspective.

“Create a persona,” he said finally. “So then I’d
have three. I’d be Kyle, Green Lantern, and this guy?”

“If you decide to keep him when we’re done, yes, you’d
have three. Is that too much work? I thought you, like, spanked
Imperiex.”

“Well, I—”

“Same week you turned back an armada of space pods or
something.”

“Well—”

“Capped a volcano to trap all the lava in a protective
bubble and hauled it into space despite the concussive force bottled inside
making it like… what was that phrase… ‘like trying to lug a small moon’?”

“I—Yes, that was me, but—”

“And you can’t handle a rented mailbox, a second bank
account and cell phone?”

Yeah, he’d be dead if he’d fought her as a villain.
No question.

BlakeCraneFriezeGame TheoryJoker
NigmaQuinnStrangeTetch

The At-Large list wasn’t exactly getting shorter.
The capture of Killer Croc, Roxy, Firefly, KGBeast and Mad Hatter was
countered by Arkham’s release of Joker, Blake and Frieze and Jervis Tetch’s
subsequent escape. Cobblepot’s operation was as active as ever, and
Double Dare were back in town.

“Oh, there you are,” Selina said, and Bruce scowled
that he didn’t hear her approach. “Do you want anything from
Belgium?”

The scowl expanded to project an aura of foreboding
into the criminal soul, warning that a righteous vengeance had come and the
Batman would not suffer your making light of crime. It was a reflex
when Catwoman flirted, and it usually produced the carefree smile he saw
now.

“I knew you weren’t listening last night,” she said.
“Recap: This persona we’re creating for Rayner, it’s not the kind of thing
you can whip up on the Internet. People in the art world live in the
world. Most of them know London, Paris and Madrid better than 14th
Street. If no gallery, collector or museum’s ever heard of this guy,
no Wikipedia entry is going to convince them otherwise. So we hit a
city, hit the biggest—”

“And you haven’t been listening when I tell you about
my day. I’m making allowances because Joker is out there, but this is
the trade off. Whether I bitch about it or not, if you don’t listen,
you won’t know things. Yes, I’ve been flying Air PowerRing. Best way
to go to Milan after breakfast and be back in time for lunch. We hit
the biggest gallery like a pair of collectors looking to buy, make some
inquiries about this Kyray. They start making calls to the majors here
in Gotham or their sister locations in London or Paris. Sometimes we
make a few calls of our own and mail out an inquiry so it has a foreign
postmark. Pretty soon there’s a rumor in Tokyo that his Empty
Vessel 8 is coming on the market in Hong Kong and there’s going to be a
very juicy bidding war between Adrian Cheng and Redford Briggs.”

Bruce grunted.

“I see. I assume your fence in Brussels figures
into today’s excursion in some way?”

“Kyray’s current works aren’t the kind of thing that
fits in my loot sack, but Kyle picked one of his old canvases he’s happy to
part with and I’m going to bring it to Igor today. Explain what a big
deal the artist is now and the kind of things he’s doing that makes the
early, hangable works such a find.”

“You’ll get more credible word of mouth from that
than the rest,” Bruce admitted grudgingly. “And Rayner should be
pleased a painting of his is deemed ‘cat-worthy.’”

Selina made a face.

“Actually, about that, I really need to do some work on
his ego. He’s okay in the galleries where he’s got me and my Birkin
bag convincing the salesman we’re there to buy, but at some point I have to
start trotting him around town to see and be seen: lunch at the MoMA, drinks
at Bemelmans, the artist with an ego the size of a planet and the society
patron he tolerates for her connections. But every time we stop
someplace for a coffee, he’s just so… sweet, soft-spoken, diffident even.
I can’t see him doing it without… adjustments.”

“So? Adjust him.”

“It’s okay? Good, I wanted to check first.
Didn’t want to risk some kind of Neo-Parallax who was going to change the
gravitational constant of the universe just to prove he can.”

Tim didn’t know if he’d been called to the manor for
Bat-business or social reasons, and seeing Dick’s car parked in the front
entrance didn’t provide any clues. If it was a case, the added guest
meant it was serious. If social, Dick’s presence meant a better chance
of fun. Unfortunately, the door opened before Tim could ring the bell
and Dick came out carrying a box of Wayne Tech gear he was picking up for
his GPD project. He had no idea why Bruce would have sent for Tim.

Alfred walked Tim down to the cave—Bruce’s being there
during the day didn’t necessarily mean a Bat-meeting. Nor did the fact
that Bruce was studying the At-Large list, nor even his observation that it
wasn’t getting any shorter. That was Bruce acknowledging his arrival
the same way Alfred offered a soft drink. Announcing what he was working on
and sharing his last thought so you could catch up was the Batman version of
saying hello.

“You wanted to see me?” Tim said, getting down to
business.

“Yes. Does Tim Drake have any use for an arts
practicum or art history credit?”

“Excuse me?”

“I have a job for you, escorting a very important—”

“There you all are!” Selina’s voice rang across the
cave.

“Alfred,” she said, handing him a glass jar the way she
once passed a cache of diamonds to a buyer. “Tierenteyn-Verlent
mustard, straight from Ghent,” she said, pronouncing it carefully like a
name she’d gone to great lengths to learn.

Then she went to Bruce and kissed his cheek as if she’d
just returned from a trip.

“This is for you,” she said, handing him a folded note,
which he unfolded, glanced at, and grunted. “And I need to talk to you
later,” she added, and then looked at Tim. She clearly hadn’t expected
him to be there, but reached into her purse and pulled out a chocolate bar.

“Here,” she said cheerily. “Belgian chocolate,
best in the world. Don’t let the Swiss tell you otherwise.”

“Thank you,” Tim said suspiciously, then eyed the candy
bar like a particularly obvious Riddler trap. “Um… feel like I’m being
set up for something really…”

“Is he still here?” Bruce asked, and Selina nodded.

“In my suite, meeting Whiskers and Nutmeg,” she said
and Bruce went off, telling Selina to ‘brief him’ before he left.

“Getting scared now,” Tim said.

Selina laughed.

“Relax, not eating bird boys today. We have a job
for you. A very important artist with an international reputation is
going to be doing an installation here in Gotham. You’re going to be
‘his people.’ Follow like a shadow, pop up out of nowhere in the middle of
lunch to tell him he has to get going, meeting Mr. Branson at three and he
mustn’t be late again. Make sure there’s a bottle of the insanely
specific brand of mineral water he drinks waiting on the table to the left
side of his chair—never the right—and weather the storm if it’s served with
a wedge of lemon instead of lime. You can either do it as his personal
assistant from Antwerp, or wherever he decides he’s from, or… it occurred to
me that you were awfully good prepping Cassie with that crash course in
Chinese art I gave her on the Finn case and you didn’t get anything out of
it. If you have any interest in picking up a few arts credits or
wanted this experience on your own resume, I don’t see any reason why you
couldn’t do it as yourself. We’d go through Hudson, say Kyray’s
assistant is pregnant and can’t fly to the States so we want to borrow a
student to take her place. Somebody who can XYZ, whatever requirements
get you the job.”

“Thanks, yeah, that’d be all kinds of cool. So
this artist, his name is Kyray?”

Selina explained about the project and that it was
actually Kyle Rayner, that he was flying her around the world to establish
his new cover and they just got back. That’s who Bruce was meeting
upstairs.

“Belgium this morning, where you got the chocolate,”
Tim said, connecting the dots like a true detective who would have gotten
there sooner if anybody had given him half a chance. “So the mustard
for Alfred, and… that slip you gave Bruce, that must have been… what?”

“Just think for a minute: Alfred asks for special
mustard. Barbara wants chocolate. Tell Bruce I’m going to
Belgium, what does he ask me to bring him? ”

Tim grinned.

“Inside track on cocaine trafficking in the Port of
Antwerp,” he guessed and Selina nodded.

“Got him a contact on the weapons pipeline in the New
Harbor as a bonus,” she said. “I should get serious catnip at the end
of this.”

Clark occasionally received a call to come to Gotham in
terms that might be called a summons. It wasn’t openly said but the
message got through that if he wasn’t off-world and wasn’t occupied holding
back an avalanche, attendance was mandatory—but he’d never been asked to
bring Lois. And of course they’d been asked together for social
outings, but those were open-ended invitations that allowed for the fickle
schedule of two reporters, one of whom was also Superman. They never
had that unspoken subtext that this is not a request. So this
morning’s call was new.

“There is literally no way to dress for this,” Lois
announced standing before her closet. And, as if in answer, the Earth
began shifting its plates under the Asian-Pacific Rim, threatening
earthquakes, tsunami and an Atlantis colony near Maldives. Clark had
to fly off, and she figured that was that. She’d grabbed her drabbest
suit and ugliest shoes in an act of celebratory spite and headed in to work…
only to have Clark practically land in front of her on the sidewalk in
Planet Square.

“Nothing as bad as we feared,” he chirped like a
demented sparrow. “We’ve got ten minutes to get to Gotham. I’ll
drop you off, check on the Atlantis colony and assuming everything’s under
control, join you for the end of the meeting. Or… whatever it is.”

So now she stood in the unspeakably tasteful lobby of
the largest and richest corporation in the chicest city in the world,
looking like a nun. It was the suit she used to travel to
former-Soviet states and interview exiles from the old Eastern Bloc.
The shoes she got for the funeral of a cousin she didn’t like.
Standing in the presence of time-travelling omnigods bent on obliterating
her planet and destroying her race, Lois was fine. She would stand
there surrounded by dimensional fissures and mentally organize her notes for
the story she would file when they failed. Standing at the reception
desk in the Wayne Tower surrounded by black marble however—ulgh! The
best she could do was announce her business with the legendary Lane moxie…
and then step meekly to the side when she felt the stares of the other man
asked to wait. Waiting to see if tachyon could strip kryptonite from a
giant mace—fine! Waiting for security to escort her to the
elevator to Bruce Wayne’s penthouse where that other guy bleeding
urban haute was also waiting—argh!

It was the kind of hauteur that could dress too far up
and too far down at the same time and somehow even out carelessly fabulous
instead of randomly careless. The unstructured blazer of cotton poplin
fit better than Lois’s but looked chosen for comfort rather than style.
Worn over a weathered artsy t-shirt and dark-wash jeans that would have
seemed woefully inappropriate if not for the top and bottom. No socks,
but the shoes—Italian wingtips—were the type that cost more than Lois’s car.
The haircut and highlights resembled that of a certain Hollywood director
Lois had interviewed who actually made her rethink the proposition that no
blonde man could be as sexy as Superman. The tan certainly didn’t come
out of a tube, and the sunglasses hinted a price tag that exceeded the
Kents’ vacation budget.

A guard in the kind of maroon blazer favored by museums
finally came up to the reception desk with the magic keys, and Lois was
horrified to see he acknowledged the other man first and was escorting them
both to the Wayne elevator. He wished them a good morning and went on
his way, leaving her alone with the Stranger of Unspeakable Chic. They
rode for about two floors in silence, when he spoke.

“Morning, Lois.”

Oh god, I interviewed him, Lois screamed
inwardly. Who the hell was he? Who that she’d invited to call
her Lois, who might be in Gotham going to see Bruce…

“Good morning,” she stalled.

Third floor, fourth… If she could make it to the top,
Bruce might not remember the interview (Lord knows she didn’t) and introduce
them. It could happen. Bruce could conceivably not know
something. Let this be the time it happens, she prayed.
Please, please let him assume we’ve never met and introduce us—

“Good flight in? The weather’s perfect for it.
The way the sun glistens off the river, never get tired of that. I’m
going to paint it one of these days.”

Paint it? How did—

“Where’s Clark? Did he get tied up with that
thing in India?”

She stared.

“The earthquake,” he prompted. “I heard there was
barely enough movement to call it that and Arthur says reports from the fish
indicate no tsunami heading for land, so—”

“Kyle?!” Lois exclaimed, too loudly for the scant space
between them.

He flipped up the lenses in another freakish act of
uber-chic and stared at her through the open gold-wire rims.

“Hi. You didn’t know it was me? Damn, it works.”

He made an abbreviated move with his fist, as if
congratulating himself scoring a goal in some invisible game—while Lois
spent the next ten floors flashing back to her first press conference and
that quandary only the greenest reporters are prey to: how to ask the
question without sounding like a complete moron. Luckily, the doors soon
opened and she figured explanations would now be hers. Instead…

“Kyle!” another female voice exclaimed loudly, thought
this one didn’t clang in the confined space of the elevator.

“Selina, mijn
schatje,” Kyle enthused… and then there were air kisses.

“Hi. I don’t know what’s going on,” Lois
announced with that glint in her eye that made prime ministers and
presidents take note.

Selina laughed like she had at LexCorp when she tricked
Superman into lifting an elevator into Batman’s path, blocking his pursuit
and ensuring her escape.

“It’s okay,” she said, exactly as she had then to
ersatz-hostage Lois. “Bruce is waiting in the study; he’ll explain
everything. C’mon, I’ll take you in. Kyray, if you’ll go on into
the living room, I’ll be with you in a minute. Pennyworth made your
special tea.”

He gave a superior smile that stopped just short of
condescension. “Very old recipe from Argentina,” he confided to Lois.
“Inés Berton blends it. Hard to track down in the States, but what are
the rich for if they can’t accommodate a few whims.” Then in a louder voice
he announced “Selina, I shall await you on the terrace. The light is
very good today. I may, perhaps, be moved to take a snapshot and one
day, if you are very lucky, I will immortalize the view from your
penthouse.”

Lois took a mental step backward from Him who was About
to Be Shredded, but amazingly Selina smiled. She smiled like it
was an honor to be patronized by the condescending ass. In
Metropolis—anywhere outside of the crazy-is-normal baseline of Gotham, in
fact—an explanation would have been offered on the way to the study.
Instead, Selina said only that a press release was going out today and Bruce
‘wanted to tell you and Clark in person before it happens.’

There were very few moments in Lois’s life when the
considerations of Superman’s wife eclipsed those of the star reporter.
Though there were a dozen ways to interpret Selina’s words—most of which
would be bad news for Superman, Metropolis, the economy, the Justice League,
or the Kent family personally—Lois’s instinctive reaction was to rejoice in
the scoop. She personally had a head start on the world, the entire
world, including Clark.

In the next instant, the horror scenarios began: maybe
Bruce was selling the Daily Planet, or the Wayne observatory spotted another
Kryptonite meteor on a collision course with the Earth… Fortunately, she was
turned over to Bruce before her imagination could get out of hand. He
repeated what Selina already mentioned and then added:

“The digital release goes out in a little under an
hour. Full press kits with all the swag should be in tomorrow’s mail…”

That ended the speculation. Bad news didn’t have
swag.

“I doubt Perry White will be inclined to spare you both
for the actual event. It’s here in Gotham and it’s not exactly what
you’d call hard news. So I’m about to call Mrs. Winn…”

And that snapped her out of it completely. Paula
Winn, the president and publisher of the Daily Planet, was absolutely
terrified of Bruce. Since the day he bought the paper, his presence
reduced her to a nervous, monosyllabic lump. Only Perry could fail to
notice. He called them ‘birds of a social feather,’ thought they were
‘chummy’ and he would turn bright red at the suggestion of his star
reporters putting their names to a reworded press release from society
friends of the paper’s publisher. Lois didn’t shrink from an omnigod
intent on killing her husband and destroying the planet they called home.
She could tell Batman his plan was hopeless.

“Honestly, Bruce, if you call Mrs. Winn with a
none-too-subtle hint to give this puff piece special attention, she and
Perry will both have some kind of seizure. The only question is ‘Who
goes first?’ And the follow-up is ‘If it happens together, can they
share an ambulance?’”

Bruce gave the same nod that he did at meetings,
pretending to consider the position of someone he respected but who didn’t
know enough of the true facts for their opinion to affect his plans.

“Lois, let me tell you what the event is,” he said,
segueing into the playboy charm that rarely failed him. “I think
you’ll see why it’s important that both you and Clark be there in person.”

He cleared his throat and explained the exhibition ‘A
Man’s Reach’ would explore themes about inspiration and achievement.
Six artists with unique voices had been chosen to tackle whatever aspect of
the question they wished, and one of them chose Superman. In what was
sure to be the centerpiece of the installation, Tae-Vrroshokh would
aggregate thousands of man on the street interviews, descriptions and
accounts from around the world, and present the words people use to describe
Superman.

“So it’s a mirror,” he concluded. “A true,
accurate mirror of how real people see Superman. I think you can guess
the words that keep coming up.”

Lois gave the little smile that was her usual response
to very good news when, as a journalist, she wasn’t supposed to care.
She was supposed to report “SUPERMAN FAILS, MOON IMPACT IMMINENT” or
“OMNIGOD FAILS, WORLD WILL GO ON EXISTING” as if she had no personal stake
in the matter. When those moments came, she’d indulge in that one
particular smile.

She told Bruce to make the call. She would handle
Perry. “You know I’ll come back with a real story. Sit down
with Bruce Wayne and a few of his Princeton buddies, something’s bound to
shake out besides this art thing…”

Bruce answered with the party smile that marked their
public flirting, and the prescience of those empty phrases knocked the Queen
of the Newsroom manner out of her like the lurch of a carnival ride.
Her eyes and voice softened as the smile faded completely.

“This is really a… hell of a gesture,” she said warmly,
her brow wrinkling in puzzled frustration that she didn’t have a better
adjective. “Clark has a good friend,” she said, trying again and again
feeling the words were inadequate and so hitting the good friend with
all the emphasis she didn’t have words for. She cleared her throat,
and rather than try and fail a third time, she patted Bruce’s hand and said
she’d also be calling Selina later from Metropolis.

“To negotiate,” she grinned. “It’ll placate
Perry, showing Mrs. Winn how calls from Gotham should be dealt with.
‘They want the Daily Planet at their Superman shindig, Lane and Kent no
less, they’re going to have to pony up with some special access…’”

The week leading up to the opening might not have seen
a summer blockbuster level of press, but A MAN’S REACH received considerably
more media attention than a late winter release sequel in which nobody had
much confidence. The artists were discussed like star athletes, albeit
from a sport the guy in the street didn’t follow. Like soccer, it was
known to be a very big deal elsewhere, and with banners hung all over the
city and ads on every other bus stop and subway platform, most Gothamites
were curious enough to listen to a blurb on the news or to read the profiles
in the paper. A few factions formed online to debate Ullias vs Kyray,
and if Momushan Kim would return to the monumental plaster sculptures of his
early career or give them another miniature in Thanagarian gold.

And of course there was the Superman angle. Barry
Hobbs, the one museum board member who voted against the exhibit, mounted a
Gotham vs Metropolis campaign. Beginning with a letter to the editor,
it complained that Superman was being allowed to upstage Batman in Batman’s
own city. Sponsored blogs quoted him, questioning why an alien from
Krypton should be in an exhibit about human exceptionalism. Superman
could fly, melt titanium with his eyes and crush coal into diamonds with his
fist. No human could relate to that, and it was only children and
simpletons who thought otherwise, dazzled by the color of that silly costume
no doubt… The only inspiration to be had would be seeing an ordinary
human cut him down to size.

It didn’t generate much of a response, apart from the
bus stop ads being vandalized by ‘BvS’ and ‘Batman versus Superman’
graffiti. It made an eloquent indictment of the intellectual emptiness
of the view, but an Op Ed from Richard Flay spelled it out for anyone who
didn’t see it on their own: “I find it extraordinary that these
critics point to a pinnacle of heroism, one of the two or three truly
universal themes that have resonated with all human cultures through every
age of our history, and attempt to dismiss it as childish
while advancing a sandbox cry ‘Our Gotham hero can beat your Metropolis one’
in the spirit of ‘My toy truck can run over yours.’”

Selina closed the Times app on her phone and called
Richard right then to say she would bid on as much Georgian silver as he
wanted.

The day of the opening, Lois and Clark arrived at the
Wayne Penthouse hours before the event would begin. Officially it was
to pick up their press passes and get a little pre-event color on Bruce and
Selina. In fact, Lois did take two bagels from Alfred’s breakfast
buffet and disappeared with Selina to see the dress she had worn to the
pre-opening cocktail party the night before. They perused a few
pictures from the event too, and Lois marveled again at Kyle’s
transformation into ‘Kyray’ posing with Julianne Moore… with Donatella
Versace… with Colin Firth.

Her eyes then narrowed with the steely determination
that could undo presidents and prime ministers—but barely registered with
those who knew Batman—and she asked pointedly what the negative press had
been.

“There has to have been more than that Hobbs character
in the Times,” she said. “What didn’t I see?”

Selina mentioned the vandalized posters and their
insignificance, apart from illustrating the type of mind Batman versus
Superman appealed to, and Lois shook her head irritably.

“Not that. You know I’m not asking about that.
I’m saying: What did Luthor try that Bruce buried?”

“Nothing that I know of,” Selina assured her. “I
know he had something in place, just in case. A few pieces in niche
papers and obscure blogs where they’d go unnoticed unless he hit the button
and had them shared and promoted all over the Internet. Only necessary
if Lex fired first—”

“Same as his protocols when Luthor became president,”
Lois noted.

“Except this time he didn’t,” Selina shrugged.
“Your guess is as good as mine as to why. Maybe he’s just picking his
battles. Same policy I have with the Post.”

“Oh yes, I saw you’re bisexual now,” Lois said wryly.

“Only in the fantasies of delusional lesbians,” Selina
quipped.

“But I’m still not clear how Bruce could have something
ready and out there to neutralize Luthor before he knew what Luthor would
say?”

“I don’t know,” Selina admitted. “But the fact
that it’s Bruce we’re talking about is pretty much its own answer, isn’t
it?”

Alfred knocked before Lois could reply and announced
that the man of the hour had arrived. Selina went out to the foyer to
assume her duties as hostess; Lois to have some fun. She walked up to
her husband and pointed to Kyle as if to a three-headed monkey.

“Did I lie?” she asked.

Though forewarned, Clark couldn’t help but stare.
There had been some odd moments since the night he walked into a ballroom to
cover the Wayne Foundation ‘League of Nations’ gala without so much as a
hint beforehand that Bruce Wayne’s date would be Catwoman, but the sight
before him now… The Green Lantern breaking into
‘Selina, mijn schatje’ when he saw her, followed by
society air kisses and cries of ‘Divine tan, darling. Did you zip off to
the Big Island to freshen it up?’ …outdid them all.

‘Richard Flay will be all over you,’ it
continued as Clark’s gaze ping ponged between them. ‘I’ll be all
over him after that letter in the Times. What eloquence.’

Kyle then greeted Bruce—with nothing but a smiling nod,
Thank Rao, because Clark didn’t think his hold on reality could stand a Fop
Off between the pair of them. Then Kyle looked their way, and as he
approached, Lois repeated “Did I lie? Did I even exaggerate?”

“Hot stuff, isn’t it,” he said, caressing the lapels of
his jacket and adjusting his sunglasses. Then he led Clark away from
Lois and whispered, “Remember the jokes in the beginning about Selina being
a corrupting influence? Well it’s true, just not how we
thought. They gave me a ridiculous bag of money to do this thing.
I mean, between the commission and the grant money, it’s a really nice
payday. That I’m supposed to be spending on a NASA-size supercomputer
and the engineers to run it and a workshop to build this massive light show.
But Bruce crunches the data on some late-model Batcomputer he’s got in the
basement, and I’m doing the rest with…” He tapped his ring and left
the rest unfinished. “So I’ve got a bag of money and, basically,
nothing to do with it.”

Clark tried very hard not to laugh in his face…

“So she starts pushing me to spend some of it on
myself. ‘Splurge a little, you’ve zero expenses and no overhead,’”
Kyle went on.

… but even journalistic detachment and Kryptonian
muscle control have their limits. Clark laughed.

“It does sound like her, yes,” he agreed to make it
seem the mirth was spread between the two of them. Kyle took this as
encouragement.

“Then she reminds me we’re going here or there on
Sunday to see and be seen. Run into ‘Trip’ Cochron at Daniel and
Brenda York at Sant Ambroeus. Before I know it, I’m getting a haircut
from the owner at the hottest salon in Gotham–and liking it,
it’s like a month’s rent but I’m looking in the mirror and I hear it in my
head ‘You’ve got zero expenses and no overhead; coffee and dessert at Sant
Ambroeus Sunday to see Brenda York’ – and I ask about highlights.
That’s an evil woman! Some kind of weird
cat-voodoo-inception-witchcraft thing she can do. It should be in her
file.”

Clark laughed again, and Tim approached.

“Kyray, Mr. Wayne is calling downstairs for the limo,”
he said pointedly. “The party will be ready to move on to the museum
in about ten minutes.”

“Tim, it’s just me, Kyle and Lois here,” Clark said.
“There’s no one to pretend for.”

Tim lowered his head and lowered his voice.

“Bruce reads lips and Alfred hears everything,” he
warned. “Not a good idea to be whispering about Selina.”

“I flew myself to Hawaii to refresh the tan,” Kyle
announced loudly. “Couldn’t see the point wasting money on airfare.
How about those Lakers!”

The drive to Museum Row was uneventful, apart from
passing a few posters marred by Batman versus Superman graffiti which
everyone decided not to notice. The final one did challenge that
resolve, where the title A MAN’S REACH was ‘illustrated’ by a graffiti’d Bat
fist stretching upward past a Superman emblem to punch a too-square jaw.
Clark turned to Lois with a look of consternation she read as ‘My chin
doesn’t really look like that, does it?’ to which she mouthed the single
word ‘No.’

The car came to a stop where the road closed to
traffic. The stretch before them was transformed into an open air
arcade, like a block party for the glitterati. Giant screens hung at
intervals to loom over the crowd 1984-style, but displaying a slide show of
the most significantly inspiring works from cave paintings through Picasso.
Beneath these screens, pristine banners hung on every vertical post,
creating a path like the approach to an Asian temple.

Selina spirited off Kyray almost immediately to
reintroduce the VIPs he’d been presented to the night before. Bruce
gave Lois and Clark an expanded overview of the information from their press
kits:

“Beginning with the line from Robert Browning: ’A man's
reach should exceed his grasp or what's a heaven for?’ the exhibit explores
Inspiration – inspiration that fuels art and scientific advancement, social
and technological progress, and materially shapes the way we deal with
adversity. All that is best in us begins there, not in fear or
aggression or animal passion. It’s the core material of what we use to
overcome that. Six artists were given commissions to explore the
subject any way they wished. The centerpiece installation
Tae-Vrroshokh selects Superman, partially because his abilities are
beyond that of humans and therefore literally exceed our grasp, and explores
the way the world views him despite – or perhaps because – he represents
that unattainable ideal. The work uses state of the art data mining
and massive data sorting techniques to aggregate descriptions of Superman
from around the world, everything from eyewitness accounts and news reports
to man on the street interviews conducted specifically for the project.”

“Tae-Vrroshokh?” Clark repeated.

“Yes, phonetic Kryptonian, I believe, meaning True
Mirror. If the Man of Steel wanted an idea of how he appears to
the world, he would find a very accurate mirror in these descriptions culled
from such a vast cross section of humanity.”

There was a fleeting smile, nearly as subtle as
Batman’s lip twitch, which Lois recognized from the times she tried to use
Kryptonian terms and got it wrong. She made a mental note to ask Clark
later what the words really meant. She also recognized the
not-even-slightly-subtle smile that followed, the one where he loved you for
making the effort, even though you said you’d hang a stone ear on the wall
and light a statue’s incense.

“What an astonishing idea,” he said, finally taming the
smile. “I know, from interviews of course, that Superman does consider
that question from time to time. I don’t imagine he ever expected
humanity to provide an answer.”

Which was true. He could narrow his focus to see
individual hairs on Bruce’s scalp, look through skin and skull into the
brain itself and narrow focus again to see a single synapse firing, but he
could never, ever begin to understand… A snapshot of how the world saw
him, to be the recipient of such a gift, it was… Clark felt more was owed
than saying thank you.

Bruce led them further down the arcade, their progress slowed by the crowd thickening with board members, art lovers and
others eager to say hello to Bruce and then stand there waiting for an
introduction as if they hadn’t realized the couple he was escorting was none
other than Lois Lane (and Clark Kent) from Metropolis. The world’s
most prominent friend of Superman, right here covering the MAN’S REACH
opening.

Always inclined to let Lois enjoy her spotlight, Clark
faded from his usual unassuming manner to that of a nearly invisible
non-entity. Even Bruce seemed to forget he was there, although that
might be only a function of his protecting Lois now that she was the center
of attention.

He scanned with his super-hearing, as was his habit in
crowds at public events, though it was rare for so much of the conversation
to be about him when he hadn’t made a costumed appearance.
Finding it uncomfortable, he zeroed in on a name dropped at the
penthouse—Richard Flay—who was clearly absorbed in artistic matters rather
than the Superman angle. That would be a safe conversation to join.

“They speak of simpletons,” Flay was saying (though
Clark didn’t realize that he was quoting his recent letter to the editor…)
“I say manufacturing conflict for the sake of the spectacle is what’s
pandering to simpletons.” (…or that the manufactured conflict he spoke of
was the one between Batman and Superman.) “Art is not a Coliseum
where ideas do battle to amuse the mob. It’s a sacrament. Man is
the only animal privileged to know himself, he is the only animal who
concocts these metaphors to explain himself to himself.”

Clark merely thought it was good stuff, very
intellectual and academic. He approached thinking this could be a
sidepiece. A very cultured one, the kind Perry didn’t care for but
knew raised the paper’s profile with the Alpha Readers he coveted.

“We live in a world where ‘a flying space man’ was sent
to us, not for our benefit but for his own,” Flay segued just as Clark
reached him. “To escape the destruction of his home planet,” he added,
turning to include Clark and opening the circle before Clark could turn
away. “He was sent by a family who loved him and wanted to save his
life. If I knew nothing more of Krypton, I could understand that,
couldn’t you? People who live and die and love their children?”

“Well, er, yes,” Clark said, startled at the directness
of the question and answering reflexively.

“And because of his alien nature, this man from Krypton
has special abilities, which he uses to help us. I see nothing thus
far that’s so very unrelatable, that exempts this Superman from being
a worthwhile object for human artists to concoct those metaphors.
Don’t we all have that urge to help others?”

“That’s certainly what I was taught, yes,” Clark said
quietly.

“To improve the world, to fix things. I submit
that Superman is completely relatable in that noble impulse, and more than
relatable, inspiring. We may feel helpless and small, sometimes too
insignificant to affect the changes we would like in the world.
Superman is a means to exorcise that frustration, seeing ourselves as
exceptional and capable, doing the things once thought impossible…”

Clark nodded but backed away. He certainly
couldn’t write the guy up as a sidepiece, but it was nice to hear. He
felt he should call Pa when he got home and mention it.

“What a load of happy horse shit,” he heard next, and
Clark turned to see a shorter man, lean and balding, perhaps forty. It
seemed unlikely that he could have heard Flay’s remarks, so Clark assumed he
objected to something on the slideshow he was facing on the overhead screens
or else the flyer in his hand.

“Not a fan of the day’s message?” Clark said making his
best leading-question approach, which just happened to corner his target and
position his bulk to block their escape before he added “Clark Kent, Daily
Planet” and offered his hand.

“I know who you are,” the man said, looking at the hand
like he might a leper’s. “The man who smeared the greatest president
this country ever elected.”

He pushed past Clark roughly and disappeared into the
crowd.

“Barry Hobbs,” a familiar voice graveled and
Clark looked up sharply. Bruce was still a considerable distance away,
doing that trick where he covered his mouth and spoke so quietly into his
hand that only Clark would hear. “He’s a great admirer of
Luthor’s.”

“So I gather,” Clark said, though it was doubtful Bruce
could read his lips at this distance.

“Has a grudge against me since a certain prep school
rugby match,” Bruce continued as if it were a field briefing. “Wayne
and Luthor are rivals so, by transference, ‘Yay Luthor; Boo Superman.’”

And ‘Yay Batman kicking Superman’s butt,’ Clark
thought, remembering the graffiti he pretended not to notice in the car.

“You should catch up with Kyle and Selina in the
greenroom,” Bruce suggested. “I’ll meet you at the third banner
after my speech.”

“And I said ‘Yes, but at least it wasn’t LexCorp,’”
Bruce’s voice echoed and reechoed in the courtyard, distorting as it rose
higher and bounced between the walls of the alleyway. It
shouldn’t have mattered, there should have been no one but birds to hear it.
The lone figure hunched over the miniature satellite dish was no pigeon, but
he didn’t care about Bruce Wayne’s words. He was remembering different
words as he worked, the unassuming little blog that made the case so
clearly. He knew there was something marvelous in the new Superman
movies, and it bothered him. Superman was a bully. The greatest
of bullies, a super-bully. How could he find that marvelous?

Now he understood. “Luthor’s ‘Alien Menace’ is a
creation of Luthor’s own fear.” The movies weren’t about the
real Superman, they were Luthor’s Superman. And that was a creation of
Alexander Luthor’s fear.

“A child is born this day,” he murmured as he checked
the transmitter.

The blogger’s point seemed to be that any specific
argument Luthor made should be considered in that light: it was a mirror.
It said more about Luthor himself than the thing he was talking about.
But to Jonathan Crane, that point was irrelevant. The opening phrase
was the Stargate: a creation of Luthor’s own fear.

The Alien was a creation of his fear. The
Alien was what the movies depicted. The whole world saw those movies.
The whole world! Luthor’s Fear projected into the minds of virtually
everyone on Earth. Placing it before them in every nuanced
detail, forcing it on them exactly as you envisioned it, not filtered in
some unpredictable way as a triggered hallucination and at the mercy of
their individual psyches. It was beyond marvelous; it was monumental.
It was glorious. Luthor’s Fear had transcended. It had
reproduced. Organically, as far as he could tell. Without even a
primer dose of toxin to prepare a brain to accept it.

Well, no longer. The babe had birthed itself with
nothing but the minor adrenaline jolt of a Hollywood soundtrack and special
effects to help it. It would toil no longer alone and unaided.
The Scarecrow had come to give it all help it could require.

“Someone asked me coming in here today if I didn’t
think it was a bad idea to be associating Wayne Tech with this installation
when its theme is so old-fashioned and outdated. If it wasn’t foolish
to be linking the name of Wayne Tech—forward-thinking and ever focused on
building a better tomorrow Wayne Tech—with an event taking its inspiration
from a poem published in 1855 named for an artist who died in 1530. I
told him there couldn’t be a better match. Superman’s city is called
the City of Tomorrow.

“Before that, it was ‘the City Always Looking Up.’
That was long before Superman arrived on the scene. They were looking
up at the first skyscrapers. Buildings are made by people looking up.
The optimism, idealism and imagination that built cities like Metropolis
isn’t old-fashioned, it’s the life’s blood of progress. It’s the only
thing that’s ever gotten things done. In the history of mankind that
we see echoed in the artworks over our heads here, nothing has ever been
accomplished by the guy who thought it couldn’t be done. It’s the
person who can see what isn’t there yet, but might be, who imagines how
tomorrow can be made better than today. I said I would be proud to
have the Wayne Tech name on every vidscreen here. Because A Man’s
Reach exceeding his grasp is how we move forward, and the day that notion is
‘old-fashioned’ is the day we stop moving at all.

“It is the day we lose our ability to adapt, to meet
a challenge, to survive. When that young man described ‘not a sadness
or an anger’ in his neighbors, ‘not a feeling of helplessness or hate, but a
kind of emptiness,’ that is the killer. The want of Hope, the cynicism
masquerading as realism.

“The negative things that young man sees are inevitable. The
challenges and even the losses are inevitable parts of life, a part of being
human. What defines us is the way we rise to meet those moments or
become lost in anxiety and fear.

“The writer of Hope looks back and says ‘Every time
we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and
we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. We can do
what is hard, we can achieve what is great. We can reach for the
stars.’ The disciples of cynicism say that’s kid’s stuff. They
use words like corny, old-fashioned and outdated. They say Hope is a
code word used to keep a people down. And that’s interesting because I
say their cynicism never built a city. It never stood up for what is
right, it never sacrificed or cared for its neighbors, cured a disease or
climbed a mountain. It never wrote a song that made someone smile.
It’s never made anyone’s life better.

“That was quite a speech,” Clark said as Bruce joined
him. “Bruce, not to imply you’re not an articulate and educated man,
but—”

“I hired Sorkin to ghost it,” Bruce admitted, sensing
that the professional writer was the one aspect of Clark’s character that
would not appreciate Bruce using alternate methods to accomplish something
Clark could do naturally.

The slideshow had been paused so all the monitors
lining the arcade could display the speeches on the courtyard stage.
Selina had stepped to the side, and Kyray stood center stage next to a giant
breaker box Bruce and Clark recognized as a Lantern Energy construct.
As he lifted his arm to throw the switch, small boxes attached to each of
the monitors in the arcade appeared to change. As soon as Kyle’s wrist
neared the breaker, the black boxes that appeared completely solid a moment
before now seemed part hologram. The closer you looked, the harder it
was to say where the physical case ended and the holographic projection
began.

The word SAVE suddenly sprouted from every third box,
falling into the main thoroughfare of the arcade in graceful arcs like
sparks from exploding fireworks. HELPFUL came next, while half of the
SAVES glowed brighter and half morphed into CARING or NOBLE. DECENT
came next, while half the NOBLEs morphed into GENEROUS and half the CARINGs
into BRAVE.

“Odd,” Bruce said dryly. “All characteristics of
a man, no mention of specific powers or abilities. I suppose we’ll get
there eventually.”

“Shut up,” Clark said, managing to keep the emotion
from his voice as AWE, INSPIRING and HERO emerged before STRONG finally
ushered in the first specifically ‘Super’ description.

It was the right response, manly understatement, but
inside, Clark’s pulse raced. First Richard Flay echoing Pa that way.
“Clark, we’re born into this world to help our neighbors.” Now Bruce.
The characteristics of a man… “Your mother and I don’t love you because you
have powers, son. We love you because you’re our boy and you’re a part
of this family. Just go on being the young man you’ve grown into, you
can’t help but make us proud.” With that he went off to college and,
within months, realized how many of the choices he faced had nothing to do
with ‘powers,’ but that the principles he’d been taught governed powers and
non-power questions just the same.

“Ah, here they are at last,” Bruce noted, though he
also noted that Flying, Super-Speed, and Heat Vision were a noticeable size
smaller than the non-meta qualities. Krypton was in medium-sized type,
along with things like Red Cape, Lois Lane, Metropolis and Justice League.

It was years later, Father’s Day, soon after that first
headline of the Justice League saving Ontario. Ma said not to come
home to the farm, they were coming to Metropolis. They seemed to like
his apartment, though Ma thought the kitchen was awfully small. And Pa
had stood over his desk, looking down at the Daily Planet and just tapping
the picture under the headline with his finger, an odd, satisfied smile that
Clark didn’t think he was supposed to see. He was at the center of the
League photo, acting as their spokesman. Clark knew he shouldn’t
notice, but he couldn’t help himself.

“You knew,” he’d said. “That it would come to
this one day.”

“Nah,” Pa replied. “I knew you’d have stuff to
deal with, Clark. We all do. Life equals ‘stuff.’ All we
can do is tell our children the truth: we’re all trying, this is the best
wisdom our parents and grandparents came up with to make sense of it.”

They went out for a walk, down to Berghoff’s for a
beer, talked about sports and the farm, beautiful movie stars they crushed
on and even a little politics. Nothing more was said of Superman, but
even today, Clark remembered that afternoon as the most wholly accepted he’d
ever felt as both Kryptonian and human.

“What does it really mean?” Bruce asked as ‘Alien’
finally made its appearance—in barely legible 8-point type. “I saw
your reaction to the title before. Tae-Vrroshokh, what’s it
really mean?”

“It could be a mirror, in a very poetic sense. Vrroshokh is
Truth, in any context that’s the essence of it: that which is of the realm
of reality. But Tae? That’s a question. It’s asking ‘Who.’ So… Tae
Vrroshokh… Who is real? Or, if you like, standing in front of a mirror,
‘Who am I really?’”

Bruce shifted his eyes subtly from the matrix of
glowing words pulsing brighter and dimmer throughout the arcade, to Clark,
the upward tilt of his gaze implying skepticism—in this case, the skepticism
of a patient teacher that a bright student was taking so long to see the
obvious. Clark realized that Bruce knew the translation was
flawed and probably let the error pass—or possibly made it himself in the
first place—in order to have this very conversation now. ‘Who am I
really?’ he put the words in Clark’s mouth while the world answered ‘Hero’
in every language.

A real hero, Clark thought, should have something to
say—to acknowledge—appreciate… The scope of what Bruce had done, he
couldn’t, it wasn’t—What do you even say? It was like the first time
lifting a volcano, just trying to think where to go, how to position,
somehow get… under it.

“Bruce,” he began, remembering the first day on the
school paper. Put something—anything—on the page, because the first
word is the hardest.

PALADIN bounded down the red carpet towards
them, in very small letters, seeming like an impish child or an enthusiastic
little dog who decided to hop off the stage and play in the crowd.

“I’m sorry, I need a minute to digest this,” he said,
knowing Bruce would understand he meant the experience and not the miniature
PALADIN bouncing around his shoe. He took a deep breath, and it hit
him.

“The first time I brought my father to the Fortress,”
he began—and paused as he turned to Bruce and saw he wasn’t listening.
His eyes were square, hostile, and focused on something behind Clark’s head.
He turned—to see an image out of his nightmares had replaced the feed from
the courtyard on every monitor. It was… him… Well NO, it was the actor
from the movie depicting him, in that bleak, colorless parody of his
costume, standing before a squad of human soldiers who were BOWING AND
GENUFLECTING TO HIM like a king or a god.

Clark felt the hot nausea he associated with green kryptonite and the hot
rage he associated with red.

“How,” he breathed, then “What is that?”

A woman screamed in the courtyard—followed by a loud
crash at the North end of the arcade and a loud pop as a monitor exploded at
the south. Tufts of thin white vapor sprayed from the base of
each banner, but it was too late for Clark see or care about that. He
was in motion before the noise of the crash subsided, and Superman had flown
in to lift the collapsed truss from the fellow it fell on. A bone
stuck out from his leg and the metal from a suspended light had cut open his
forehead.

..:: This man has a head wound and a broken leg at
least, ::.. he reported into the Justice League comm as he flew to
wrangle the wild, electrified cables snaking from the exploded monitor.

..:: NO! ::.. the comm answered in Bruce’s voice
and ..:: You diseased maniac! ::.. in Kyle’s as a giant green energy
mace knocked him out of the arcade and down the block to smash the roof of a
parked taxi.

Though he’d traveled nearly a city block, the impact
didn’t take a second to shake off but the sudden distance he had on the
scene was enough to shift his focus to the sound. What had begun as
one isolated scream was erupting into complete pandemonium. He flew
back—spotting Batman on an intercept at the front entrance.

A punch driven by a kryptonite ring smashed into his
Adam’s apple, knocking him off his approach and sending him hurling into the
pavement to land in a painful sprawl.

“The heck?” he coughed, before a green bubble scooped
him up and lifted him. Superman pounded fiercely on the bubble, which
slowed its rise but not its forward motion. It continued for several
seconds while Superman gave it an ineffective blast of heat. Then the whole
thing jostled as Kyle adjusted his hover and swung the bubble several times
around his own head to build momentum before sending it hurling into the
river.

The screaming had only intensified, and he could easily
make out Lois’s among them. He knew he couldn’t make Batman and GL the
priority, he just had to work around them. He opted for high speed
strikes: flying in faster than either man could see, disposing of the first
threat he saw, and flying out again before they knew he was there.
That approach took care of an electrical fire, prevented a stampede,
transported six of the injured to the closest hospital, and incinerated the
four drones that came in from somewhere…

When he found himself…

Over the river.

Over Wayne Manor.

Over Bludhaven.

Somehow he kept…

Overshooting Museum Row when he tried to fly back at
super-speed.

“Bruce,” he said like a curse word.

As an experiment, he speed-flew directly from Bludhaven
to Wayne Manor and found he could do it. But when he tried to fly over
Museum Row on the way back, he found he’d overshot Bludhaven and wound up
over the Atlantic. How did—

..:: Superman, it’s Oracle, ::.. the Justice
League comm announced in what was, at that moment, a more beautiful voice
than Lois’s. ..:: I’ve got Batman and Green Lantern’s channels
locked out for now. It won’t last if he realizes, but I don’t think he
will. He’s got other things on his mind right now. ::..

“I noticed,” Superman said. “Any idea what
happened back there?”

..:: Affirmative. The whole crowd is doused
with Scarecrow toxin, so whatever stimulus they get, and it seems like he’s
given them a nice assortment, they hallucinate into something worse.
Nightwing is there now, he can use your help placing gas canisters.
With Batman, Catwoman, Robin and Green Lantern in there, and eight museums
for people to hide in, it’s the quickest way to get the antidote into
everybody reliably. ::..

“Problem,” Superman reported. “Bruce has
something rigged up to mess with my perceptions. I can’t get in at
super-speed, and when I approach on my own I’m attacked by one or both.”

..:: Well, do the best you can, ::.. Oracle said
dryly. ..:: Worst case, you’ll be a diversion. They can’t
bother Nightwing if they’re focused on you. But look, when you go
back, whatever happens,don’t use your heat vision. ::..

“There are drones,” he told her.

..:: You see drones; they see you taking out video
screens with a picture you find offensive. Oracle out.::..

Superman’s lip twitched.

“That was a lucky shot,” he told no one in particular
before flying back towards Gotham at his regular speed.